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Jordan Lashes Out At Sharon
by Tareq Ayyoub
AMMAN, Jan 31 (IslamOnline) - Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abul Ragheb on Wednesday lashed out right-wing Israeli Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon and described recent statements by the Israeli official as aiming at creating "dissent" between Jordan and the Palestine National Authority.
"The statements of the Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon are merely fabrication aimed at tarnishing the Jordanian-Palestinian relations," Abul Ragheb said.
"The two leaderships are smarter than being fooled by these meaningless and illogic lies," the premier, responding to a question from deputy Mohammad Badri during the Lower House' regular session yesterday.
Responding to Sharon's statements that there was a risk that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could topple Jordan's monarchy, Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said, "These are the words of a rabid man."
"When he [Sharon] says something like this, he assumes again his hostile intentions to re-open a wide conflict," Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio.
In an interview published on the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot's Internet site, Sharon said, "There is a risk of Yasser Arafat toppling the Hashemite regime in Jordan and establishing [a] Palestinian state in that country.
Without a buffer zone, the borders of such a state would stretch from the border with Iraq to the east up to Petash Tikvay and Kfar Saba," Israeli towns to the northeast of Tel Aviv.
"Sharon is overtly hostile to the peace process and all these intentions constitute a kind of obsession in his sick head, which he has had, and carried out massacres," with, the AFP quoted Abed Rabbo as saying.
"Sharon wants to go on stealing Palestinian land and with [Israeli] settlements, saying this is for defense and security.
"Sharon constitutes a danger to the peace process, and Palestinians and Arabs are called on to stand against him in unity."
Abul Ragheb said that Jordan was not disturbed by Sharon's comment, which he said would not have any impact on Palestinian-Jordanian ties.
"The only logic the leader of the Likud... is to distort the peace process which recently has started to bear positive fruits and to deviate all parties with different sideline issues," the premier told the 80-member Chamber.
"Jordan stands with all its means with the Palestinian brethren to have their legitimate rights," Abul Ragheb added.
The Prime Minister said that creating a Palestinian state is a "strategic goal for Jordan as much as it is a Palestinian strategic goal. We yearn [for] the day [when] Jordan would have joint borders with the Palestinian state.
"Neither Sharon, nor anybody else, could have any effect on us and we have no worry from any party. We do not interfere in the Israeli elections," Abul Ragheb said, adding, "We will not respond, neither to Sharon's statements, nor anybody [elses]."
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